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Living To Work or Working To Live · Wanzology

• Living To Work or Working To Live  Are you ready for a good time good time, a good time? Hey, what's happening? How ya doin? Welcome to another Wednesday, and if it's Wednesday, then you already know it's another episode of WANZOLOGY!!! I could talk about the meaning of life. I could talk about how it's still strange to me that the only species of human being hasn't figured out how to get along, but I think I'll tell you about something that happened today. I got a phone call. I got a phone call from one of my best friends from college, we haven't talked in a while and he was just calling to say hi. We got almost to the end of the conversation and we're talking about a mutual friend who for him, was a really, really close friend. This friend of his had a substance abuse problem and wouldn't admit it, wouldn't try to fix it. It led to part of his demise and he died. My friend admitted to me today that, you know, he's not really sure. He's actually forgiven his friend for not doing more to stop the addiction so he could be around here with us more. I totally get that. I've been in recovery for 26 years. I have seen people pass away, meaning. I've seen them, the places that I go and I see'em and they're there and a year in and year out they're there and all of a sudden they disappear and nobody knows what happened to'em. Sometime later, somebody comes in and tips a chair, leans it against a table, and lights a candle in front of the chair, which is code for they not here no more. They're gone, gone, gone, gone. One of the other people who I've been doing this thing with said, “Some have to die so others will learn how to live.” I don't know about you, but it kind of made me feel ‘some sort of way’ listening to my friend talk about his friend. I could hear in his voice how much angst he had about this guy not taking care of himself better. It was almost as if he resented the fact that he was gone. I thought that was really kind of strange, but I get it. You get to a certain age and people start leaving the planet. Some people get in accidents, others don't take care of themselves, and their health overtakes their life, and others are just in the wrong place at the right time. They're part of some other unconnected event. My mom used to say, “If God wants to talk to you, you can't put him on hold.” When you're gonna go, you're gonna go. You won't have a choice. So before then I was thinking, before I go, what am I gonna do? And I wasn't sure. I mean, I have a lot of. Personal aspirations, things that I want to do, but you know, I've got family, kids, grandkids. I've got all kinds of people that are near and dear to my heart. There's no way I'm gonna be able to reach all of them. So what am I going to do? How do you climb a mountain? One step at a time. How do you eat a pizza? One bite at a time. So I kind of took the afternoon off and really didn't do much of anything. I worked on a little bit of music, but for a while I just laid on the couch. What am I doing? Some people say you have to live every day, like it's your last. What if you don't know what that means, 'cause if it were my last day and I knew it was my last day, well it'd be much easier to understand what I do. But if the end is not known, how do you determine what to do? It's a very interesting question, and I haven't really found an answer yet, so I'm gonna verbally process it here, and maybe that will give you something to think about. After I got off the phone with my friend, I went and made me some lunch, and while I was making lunch, I looked out the window and I live at the top of a four-story building that overlooks a small lake. And on this day, the clouds were starting to clear and the sky was starting to turn the blue. I stood there and felt extremely blessed. I remember those times when I didn't have enough ‘dot’, ‘dot’, ‘dot’. I didn't have enough money. I didn't have enough hours at work. I had more debt that I could possibly handle. It seemed, I was overwhelmed with just living. I was stressed out all the time. I didn't know how I was going to rob Peter to pay Paul. Paul already knew Peter and Peter knew everybody else. There was really no one to ask. There are people who don't understand what that's like. Living near the poverty level is a lot of work because you're always under the gun, you're always stressed out. The first and the 15th are just maddening because you have to decide what's not gonna get paid. Sometimes you can play it off and pay this part of your bills this month and then next month pay another part and let that part from last month go. If you can get good at it, you can avoid the late fees. Well, why don't you like make a budget? Great. A budget? What is a budget? A budget is where you put down how much money you take in and how much you put out. Well, how do you think I figured out that I was an ‘under-earner’. I had a budget and there were more expenses than there was income. That's a problem. Now, in the meantime, another suggestion was why don't you do something to earn some extra money? Now we're getting into the part that's really difficult for people who haven't lived it to figure out. There are only so many hours in a day, and if you're working, all the hours that you're awake is that living? If you just didn't talk to anybody and just worked, you worked at a job where you really didn't have to talk to people. Is that living? How long do you think you could do that? Every day you work 14, 16 hours, come home, go to bed. Sleep eight hours and get up and do it again, That’s 24 hours, 16 plus eight. How are you gonna get eight hours of sleep if you can't even concentrate because you're worried about what the next day is gonna bring. So you may only get four hours of sleep, two of the four left, you're up and walking around and pacing. And the other two probably taken up by, I don't know, going to the bathroom for all I know. It is a lot of work being poor, being an ‘under-earner’, you have to ‘DO’ so many things. Yeah, you can work two jobs, but if they're not close to each other, how much time are you gonna waste commuting? If you have a vehicle, how much will it cost to maintain that vehicle so that you can go from one job all the way over to the other one? Would it be cheaper to take public transit? Well, it doesn't really go exactly to where you need to go, so you'll have to spend time walking from wherever you catch or get dropped off, and that's more time that you're not working and not earning. It becomes a very, very vicious, vicious circle. In 2010, I was outta work. I had worked my last contract at Microsoft and I was determined to get a software testing job that wasn't at Microsoft. While I was waiting to get hired by somebody, I was asked, “Do you want to live to work or work to live?”, and man, I was on that debate in my head for a couple of days. “Do I want the live to work or work to live?” What does that really mean? You remember the saying, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy? I didn't really know, all I knew is that in August of 2010, I got a great job. I took so many suggestions on how to get out of debt, and I followed them. I became more disciplined with my spending. I didn't have a budget, I had a spending plan, which is different from a budget. I learned the advantage of joining a credit union versus being with one of the big major banks. The big major bank that I was with was always screwing me over, and when I say screwing me over, I was actually screwing myself over because I wasn't diligent every day to check my balance and where are these receipts and account for everything that happened that cost money, or that gave me money in a day. Translation? I was lazy, I was distracted. I was not diligent. So here I am now I've got this job that I love, I'm working in downtown Seattle, I can walk to the credit union, all I need to do is walk out of the building that I'm in, go to the corner, bus comes there, takes me almost to my apartment. It's a three minute walk from where I get dropped off to my apartment. In the morning. it's a three minute walk to get to the bus stop and you just reverse the process. After a year, I had 75% of my debt squashed. My credit rating went up 90 points and all of a sudden I was able, I was able, I had put money away, once my credit score got to a certain level, I was able to ask about their auto loan program. I qualified, I went out, picked a car, test drove that car, liked the car, came back, put money down on the car, signed a piece of paper, and drove the car away for the first time in my life. that was in 2010. I'd never done that before. Once I got the car, it's really weird what started to happen. Not long after I got the car, I got a call from a college friend and she said, “You need to audition for the Seattle Opera!! They're doing a production of Porgy and Bess!”, and I said, “You know, I've never sung opera before.” “Ah, I was with you in college. I know you can sing!! Made an appointment, went by her house, she gave me a lesson, handed me a piece of music, I went to the audition, performed the piece of music, and went home. Two days later, I got a call back, meaning they wanted to hear me again. Okay, so I went back to my friend's house, got another lesson, another piece of music, went down and performed that. Four days after I auditioned, I was informed that I had been chosen to be part of the chorus in Seattle Operas, production of Porgy & Bess!! And I got to play the Blind Man of Catfish Row, and it was awesome!! I had never done anything like that before. August performance, boom!! I couldn't believe it. I had done it going into the fall ife got a little weird. One of my kids was having problems living with his mom. I'm playing bass in a blue-eyed soul band, I am making it!!! I am above water, financially!! December of 2011, my son decided he didn't wanna live with his mom anymore, so he came to live with me!! Prayers answered!! Four months after that, my son is doing better in school, we're getting along, everything's hunky dory! The routine is set. I get a phone call in the middle of the night and I'm asked to go sing for a guy, so I did. Didn't think anything of it. All I knew is that my son was doing way better and he was going to graduate and I was gonna reward him for his hard work. I took him and his brother to Hawaii!! It's the first time all three of us had gone on a vacation ever, and it was wonderful. Rented a Chrysler 300, which was my favorite car at the time, went to North Shore, saw Turtles, it was awesome!! DMX even performed, he was in town when we were there. We went and saw DMX, it was tight!!! Came home, went back to work, didn't think anything of it, phone rings, It's Ryan Lewis! “Hey, uh, we're doing a, we're doing a video, you wanna be in it?”, “Sure, why not!!”, so the next two days I was caught up in that, didn't think anything of it. Now we're into August of 2012. August 29th, the video for “Thrift Shop” dropped and started taking over the world!! It started taking over the world, and I was a part of it. I didn't know what I was gonna do, but I knew I was not gonna blow this. And sure enough, by the time October had come around, I had secured a place on the tour and I was gonna do some dates, and one of the dates that was on the schedule was playing at the Fillmore in San Francisco. Which to me was like Mecca, musically!! I used to listen to AM radio on Saturday nights! They'd broadcast concerts from this place! I hadn't heard from management whether I could actually take extra days to go do this show, so I went anyway. How often are you gonna get a chance to visit Mecca? I'm standing in the middle of the place. In the middle of the floor, looking at all these posters of everyone that were the pillars of American Rock and roll, they had a poster for everyone who had performed at this place. As I looked around, it started to occur to me that that dream that I had had most, if not all of my life, to be a performer, a professional, go on tour with a hit record, it was happening, IT WAS HAPPENING!! The next day I had the tour van and I was lost in San Francisco looking for a credit union where I could deposit my first tour check. My phone rang. It was my boss, wondering where I was. I told him, “Ya know, at my age (I was 51), at my age, an opportunity like this probably is never gonna come again, so I'm gonna stay out here.” I quit. The only job I've ever quit in my life to go on the road with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and sing “Thrift Shop”!! And I can tell you every single dream that I had ever had as a performer came true, and I got statues to prove it!! Now, why am I telling you this 13 years later? I'm telling you this because how did it start? I was asked a question. Did I want to live to work or work to live? I chose the latter. I got my act together. I stopped looking two months in advance and just started looking two days in advance. If I could keep myself straight for two days, well that's most of a week. And if I could keep myself straight for two weeks, I'd get a paycheck and if I spent like my plan, I wasn't gonna be broke, I wasn't gonna be hungry, I wasn't gonna be homeless! I'd have enough! And I did all that and it led to the car. The car led to the audition. The audition led to the opera. The opera led to my son moving in. My son moving in, led to the studio session. The studio session led to my son graduating and the trip to Hawaii, which led to the filming of the video, which led to the release of the video, and the rest, as they say, is history! So my question to you is, are you working to live or living to work? Your answer may be the root of what you feel. There are plenty of resources out there, most of them are free, hell, most of them are on YouTube! Wanna get outta debt? They'll tell you wanna stop underearning? They'll tell you. If you have a question, the internet has an answer, and now they got Chat GPT! I wouldn't trust it though. So what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? Don't you wanna work so that you can live? It's up to you. No one's gonna live your life for you. No one's gonna work your job for you. So don't you think if you're gonna put in all that work, you deserve to treat yourself to something nice like a good life. Are you living to work or are you working to live as Black Sheep said, “You could get with this or you could get with that.” The choice is yours!! Thanks for being here! Love y'all! Do me a big favor. Make sure that you take care of yourself. You never know who is depending on you being here. It's not just your family, there are others in your life. I'll see you next week.